NEW DELHI: US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick called upon India to open up the agricultural sector for trade, saying “it just can’t stay closed”.
The farm sector has remained a no-go area for government that has cited domestic sensitivities, even as US has insisted on greater access for American nuts, fruits and poultry. “Indian market for agriculture has to open up… How you do that and the scale by which you do that, may be, do quotas, may be do limits. You can be smarter when you have your most important trading partner on the other side of the table,” he said, indicating that the US acknowledged that an open-ended liberalisation may not be feasible.
While suggesting that India should “step out of the model” he repeatedly called for a bilateral deal, arguing that a pact “with the largest consuming economy in the world” would be beneficial.
Speaking at the India Today Conclave, Lutnick sought a “grand deal”: “Let’s bring India’s tariff policy towards America down, and America will invite India to have really an extraordinary opportunity and relationship with us.”
Responding to a question on the larger India-US ties amid too much emphasis on trade and tariffs during Trump’s second term, he said: “there are plenty of levers that govts can pull while doing business with each other… India has historically bought significant amounts of its military (equipment) from Russia. We think that is something that needs to end.”
He then went on to say that India was the ‘I’ in BRICS, the group that also includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, where Beijing had proposed a common currency, something that Trump is unhappy with, seeing it as an attempt reduce importance of the dollar. “These are the kind of things that don’t create the love and affection that we feel deeply towards India. We would like those things to end and we would trade to be more fair and we would like to create an incredible and strong relationship with India,” the US commerce secretary said.
On China, he said: “China has very high tariffs. Tariffs we have put today is because of opioid production… when we get to April 2, we will talk of a broader range of tariffs.”